All of living is a process of coming of age, of reconciling
the essence of the inner self with one’s outer being,with the world, and withchanging expectations for that self in the world.– Kay E. Vandergrift

Rome, Italy

The teen and young adult years, when young people are perched precariously on the brink between childhood and
adult responsibilities, are, of course, when the coming of age process is most obvious.– K.E.V.

Kabul, Afghanistan

Tanzania

Los Angeles, USA

The imagination of a boy is healthy,
and the mature imagination of a man is healthy;
but there is a space of life between,
in which the soul is in a ferment,
the character undecided, the way of life uncertain,
the ambition thick-sighted. – John Keats

Havana, Cuba

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition

– Theodore Roethke

Gubbio, Italy

Germany

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.– Abraham Lincoln

Kabul, Afghanistan

Budapest, Hungary

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect,he becomes an adolescent;the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.– Alden Nolan

Kabul, Afghanistan

Dublin, Ireland

We don’t stop playing because we grow old.
We grow old because we stop playing.
– George Bernard Shaw

Italy

Flechtingen, Germany

Zabid, Yemen

Germany

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh — at yourself.– Ethel Barrymore

La Fortuna, Honduras

Honduras

Zagreb, Croatia

Young dancers are training at a very vulnerable time in their lives, through adolescence, and while they are trying to work out who they are as people, never mind as a dancer. So train the whole person, not just the dancer.– Deborah Bull

Tibet

Passage

Young man,Young woman,Life turns for you.This is a magic time,a mythic passage,In your becomingWe who welcome you,None of us is too oldSo as to have forgotten–the mystery of notknowing,–the delight of firstdiscovery,–the impatience to hurrywhat will come next–the terrible wonderfulnessof the changes…-Edward Searl

Everywhere I go in the world, I see young and old,
rich and poor, reading books.
Whether readers are engaged in the sacred or the secular,
they are, for a time, transported to another world.

Myanmar/Burma

Ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press which enabled
everyone access to books, artists have tried to portray the relationship of readers and books.

Myanmar/Burma

Garrett Stewart’s book, The Look of Reading:Book, Painting, Text, explores the relationship of
reading and art.He points out that a wide array of artists from Rembrandt to Picasso and Cassatt
and dozens more,over the past 500 years
have painted people reading and the “look of reading” on the subjects’ faces.

Shanghai, China

Rome, Italy

Spanish Steps, Rome, Italy

Chiang Mai, Thailand

We are familiar with words describing images, but not so
familiar with images describing words and the
impact reading has on our lives.

Istanbul, Turkey

Reading a good book is a universal activity,
and people read while they do just about everything else.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
– Jorge Luis Borges

Istanbul, Turkey

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
– Emily Dickinson